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Observation of single-beam polarization instabilities in sodium vapor

J. Nalik, Michael Krueger, Wulfhard K. Lange

Published May 21, 1990• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

We report on instabilities in the polarization when the output of a cw dye laser is transmitted through sodium vapor. In /contrast to related recent experiments neither external resonators1,2 nor counterpropagating beams2,3 are used.

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IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics•Sep 1, 1974•11 citations
We have observed that the polarizations and intensities of counterpropagating laser beams in sodium vapor are temporally unstable. The output from a stabilized dye laser tuned near to the 3S1/2 → 3P1/2 atomic transition was split to form the two counterpropagating beams. These beams were polarized with the same linear polarization and were weakly focused to a spot size of ~750 μm in sodium vapor having a density of ~3 × 1013 cm−3. We monitored the light generated in the polarization orthogonal to that of the pump beams. For a detuning of 1.01 GHz to the high-frequency side of the 3S1/2(F = 2) → 3P1/2(F = 2) transition and a power of 160 mW in one of the beams, we found that the threshold for the instability occurred at a power of 15 mW in the other beam. Slightly above threshold, the instability was found to be periodic in nature. As the intensity in the counterpropagating beam was increased far above the threshold value, wild fluctuations in the polarizations and intensities of the transmitted beams were observed. We have found that these fluctuations are chaotic and that the system evolves on a strange attractor whose dimension increases with increasing laser power. These observations are in qualitative agreement with the theoretical predictions of Gaeta et al.,1 which predict that the polarizations of counterpropagating beams in a Kerr medium are unstable to the growth of temporal fluctuations.
Optical tristability via optical pumping has been observed in the transmission of a Fabry-Perot interferometer containing Na vapor irradiated by light from a cw dye laser on the high-frequency wing of the D1{D}_{1}D1​ line. For linearly polarized incident light, three stable states appear in the polarization of the transmitted light: ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{+}$ dominant, ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{\ensuremath{-}}$ dominant, and linear polarization.
We report steady-state self-focusing, self-trapping, and self-defocusing of a cw dye laser beam in sodium vapor for frequencies within several Doppler widths of the DDD-line resonance transitions. We measured the variation of the beam profile as the light propagates through the vapor. We observed a 20-mW beam self-trapped in a 12-cm-long filament having a half-power diameter of 70 \ensuremath{\mu}m.
We report steady-state self-focusing, self-trapping, and self-defocusing of a cw dye laser beam in sodium vapor for frequencies within several Doppler widths of the DDD-line resonance transitions. We measured the variation of the beam profile as the light propagates through the vapor. We observed a 20-mW beam self-trapped in a 12-cm-long filament having a half-power diameter of 70 \ensuremath{\mu}m.